How do we defeat VSU?

By Sean Healy
MELBOURNE — Recent events at La Trobe University, where students managed to beat back a university attempt to cut Students' Representative Council (SRC) funding, have put the issue of the Kennett government's "voluntary student unionism" (VSU) legislation back on the agenda. A general meeting of 300 angry students, followed by a brief occupation of the administration building, showed that students can make an impact. How can this be carried into a campaign to repeal the VSU legislation? Many activists felt that the campaign to regain SRC funding would automatically spark a broader campaign against VSU. This didn't happen.
The anti-VSU campaign has not regained the momentum it had prior to the occupation on August 15. Students prepared to mobilise against a threat to their SRC, weren't as ready to launch into a general offensive against VSU.
One of the reasons for this was that the campaign lacked demands that could continue to mobilise students. The initial demands were, "Give us back our money" and "Stop VSU". With the first demand satisfied, the second has proved too abstract to continue mobilising students.
This problem has preoccupied campaigners for the last few weeks. Unfortunately, the solutions proposed have been unsatisfactory.
One idea was that, in order to make the VSU legislation unworkable, SRCs and student unions agree to declare publicly that they had spent general service fee money "illegally" on political purposes, forcing the Kennett government to intervene. Such intervention would provide students with an immediate focus to mobilise around. However, following the announcement of this proposal on August 31, the Kennett government simply said thanks for telling us, we'll take it off next year's funding.
The second strategy was to focus on defending the editors of Rabelais, the La Trobe student newspaper, and the SRC president, who are under threat of prosecution for publishing an article on "The Art of Shoplifting" in the June edition.

The prosecution of the Rabelais editors under legislation originally targeted at pornography, is an attack on freedom of speech and should be opposed. However, this proposal begs the question of whether a campaign against VSU can be based on a defensive struggle, aimed at getting the police to drop charges. The initial Rabelais article sparked anger not just from the police, tabloids and retail traders, but also from ordinary students. While the editors had every right to print it, the article gave students' opponents a perfect opportunity to isolate them; to paint student organisations as a lunatic fringe.
The ineffectiveness of the campaign to date has led to frustration on the part of student activists, and to anti-VSU stunts. One such incident involved students dumping a pile of shit on the steps of Parliament House which did not help the campaign.
The lack of direction of the anti-VSU campaign is due to a number of factors. First, the nature of the legislation, which runs itself without requiring state government intervention into student organisations (although it also doesn't prevent it). This shifts the administration of VSU on to individual universities.
Secondly, the federal government's Student Organisation Support (SOS) scheme, whereby the federal Department of Employment, Education and Training funds activities deemed "non-allowable" by the VSU legislation, has proved to be a double edged sword. Student organisations are already dependent on SOS money, which will last only a year or two more. SOS has confused activists by lulling them into a false sense of security.
A third factor is the Kennett government's strategy for implementing VSU. Kennett is content to allow federal funding to be eventually cut off (in spite of his recent legal challenge to it). He believes that by slowly strangling SRCs' funding sources for "non-allowable political" activities, he'll be able to either tame student organisations, or increase the distance between student organisations and students, making any later challenge to VSU impossible. A head-on confrontation seems unlikely at this stage and would only occur if Kennett believed student organisations were much more isolated from the student body than they are now.
Finally, the majority of students are far from convinced of the necessity of student organisations. The number of students mobilised at La Trobe last month, while effective, just scratched the surface. The kind of strategy needed to mount an effective challenge to VSU legislation must be aimed at winning much broader student support.
A general cross-campus campaign aimed at convincing students of the need for student unionism is needed. Demands should force the universities to surrender control of the general service fee to fund presently "non-allowable" activities such as clubs, societies and student newspapers. At the same time, present funding arrangements need to be secured, if appropriate by signing funding agreements between the SRC and the university.
The campaign should encompass a broad range of activities, including petitions, public forums, information and strategy sessions for activists, and stickers and posters aimed at popularising the message that "Students need student organisations". This would prepare, educate and organise students to take on the bigger anti-VSU campaign.
The Kennett government is neither invincible nor easily beaten. It will need the united strength of the whole student body, linked with the broader community, to win this campaign.